Excerpt from President Lincoln and the Chicago Memorial of Emancipation: A Paper Read Before the Maryland Historical Society, December 12th, 1887 We are prepared, by this glance at the moral and Christian aspect of the conflict, to understand what must have been the feelings and expecta tions of a large part of the religious community at the North, when, in the interest of slavery, the South madly seceded from the Federal Union, and essayed to destroy the work of the Revolu tionary Fathers. They could not but believe that the hour of destiny had struck; that the thunder Of the rebel guns against Sumter was the death knell of slavery; that the answer to their fervent prayers had at last come; not, indeed, as they had hoped, through the peaceful agency of reli gion and politics, but, as they had feared, through the retributive agency of bloody war'. They saw that, by invoking war in defence Of their cherished institution, the slave-holders had also bared its breast to the sword; that national emancipation, impossible under the Constitution, in time of peace, as an act of legislation, might become feasible, under the war power, as an act of military necessity. It' was with intense inter est, therefore, that 'they watched the progress of the conflict, during the first year Of its history. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.